Cattle Branding

I've done this blog for almost a year and a half now.  Its become a fun way to document memories and milestones for the kids, as well as a fun way to share with our family and friends what's going on in our family's day to day activities.  But another reason its become such a dear project is because its allowed me to teach our friends what life on a real farm is all about and try to break the "Old MacDonald" hillbilly stereotype that us farmers have in the eyes of most city folk!  I've taught you about haying, silage, the whole crop process from preparation to planting to harvest, calving, farrowing, raising chicks from incubator to their old mother hen days, nursing livestock, maintaining equipment.... the list could go on.  And today, the list is going to grow by one as I share the newest endeavor we've started this past week: branding.

Speaking of stereotypes, most of you probably have the same image in your heads when I mention the word "branding":  one of a handful of old, dusty cowboys duded up in old, dusty cowboy gear
(cowboy hat, trench coat, boots, spurs, etc.) with cigarettes hanging out of their cursing moustached mouths, all gathered around a campfire on the open range containing branding irons getting hot;  they're all taking turns roping calves, throwing them on the ground and holding the calf while some creative Wild West brand is burned into its hide so their mangy, good fer nuthin neighbors won't go trying to steal their pride herd.  Straight out of the black and white Westerns, right?  Well, its not quite like that in modern day Iowa!  (I know we're old fashioned, but not quite that old!)

The pictures I'm sharing were taken over a two day period.  I got to help Josh and Loren on the first day, but the second day they were on their own.  But you'll see...

In order for me to help, we had to make arrangements for the kids:  Grandma's house!
We try to have the kids around whenever we can (after all, that's how kids learn and how they're love for what we do is developed!), but the whole branding process is a pretty dangerous one for kids to be around.  So we wisely opted for them to stay at a safer location.

The scenario about the cowboys I described at the beginning of the blog post is way different than our setup.  Most people think of hot branding when its mentioned, where the owner's logo is actually seared into the hide of the animal.  As you can imagine, this technique is very painful and stressful for the animal.  However, the method we use is a much more humane, virtually painless, method: freeze branding.  Freeze branding uses an extremely cold brass iron to create the owner's logo on the animal.  I'll explain the technique in stages with pictures below, but first I'll explain very briefly how it works:  every hair has two follicles, a growth follicle (which, obvious by its name, makes the hair grow) and a color follicle (which, obvious by its name, gives the hair color).  Hair naturally grows as a clear shaft, but the color follicle provides pigment that colors the hair.  Whenever that color follicle is exposed to extreme cold, the follicle is killed and stops producing pigment to color the hair.  The hair then grows back white.  So when someone freeze brands, they are creating a permanent white outline of the brand logo into the animal's hide rather than producing a scar as in hot branding.  Make sense?

Now, let me show you how we do it:

Here's the setup.  In the big blue cooler are blocks of dry ice.  We all know about dry ice; its that cool (no pun intended) stuff that creates the foggy effect and freezes things at an moment's touch.  In the smaller cooler in front, we've added 99% alcohol (not the drugstore stuff, this alcohol is s-t-r-o-n-g STRONG!) along with several pieces of the dry ice we've broken into chunks.  This concoction is somewhere in the neighborhood of 160 - 180 degrees BELOW ZERO!!!  Yeah, that's a little cold.  Hence the reason we didn't allow the kids to be around.  One little touch and whatever it came into contact with is instantly frozen. 
Here's a funny (funny as in "almost froze the side of my nose and half my cheek off" funny kind of way):  after we branded the first heifer, Josh invited me to touch it to feel the frozen patch. I had decent gloves on, so it was okay.  After only about a minute, I rubbed a tickle on my cheek and soon noticed it was slightly numb.  Moral of the story:  wait for your glove to warm up before untickling a tickle when freeze branding!

The branding iron sits in the alcohol-dry ice solution for at least five minutes before every use.

So many things to point out in this picture!  First, notice that Josh is both cigarette and moustache free, thus defying both stereotypes in the introduction! (Cowboy hat doesn't come out until summertime.) Second, you can see the chute that the cattle walk into.  This is a squeeze chute; it adjusts in size to keep the cow nice and tight inside the chute so its not jumping around potentially causing all kinds of ruckus.  It also keeps the animal still so the brand can be held on.  Third, the chute "wall" originally had solid steal bars all the way across (see them at the front of the chute?).  But thanks to the process that we like to call  "Van Zante Modification", Josh and Loren were able to cut and weld a hinged "door" to it. That allows access to the branding site.  And finally, you can see that the branding site we've chosen is on the animal's upper left hip.  This makes a difference because when a brand is registered, the certain brand has to be in a certain spot.  We've chosen a "VZ" to be placed on the area just described.  Now, whenever the cattle are sold, the sale barns will check the brand with the state's registery and make sure that its actually us selling and not someone who has stolen them.  The brand is also very useful in case our cows get into our neighbor's cows or vice versa:  we can easily sort the black apart now without having to rely on less accurate ear tags (plastics tags in the cow's ears for identification purposes).

The first step is having to get rid of the hair on the branding site so the iron freezes as close to the skin as possible.  To do this, we have to fluff up the hair with a blower (kind of like a mega sized hair dryer but without the heat) ...

...and then shave it with clippers.  The hair is shaved very close to the skin.  This was my job the first day.  You can see Josh took over the second day when this picture was taken.  (Its a many more day job, but this is just from the first two.)  And then the area that has been shaved is soaked with the 99% alcohol - the same stuff that's in the solution in the cooler.

And then the branding iron is applied.  You can't see it in this picture, but Josh wears special gloves to protect his hands from both the cold iron handle (can you see the frost that's developed by the iron?) and from back splash.  The iron "smokes", which makes it look a whole lot worse than it is!  In fact, the animal hardly reacts!  We noticed that after holding the iron on for five seconds, the cows would kind of jumped a little like "Wow, that's cold!" but then settled down and pretty well just waited to be let out of the chute.  The iron is left on for sixty seconds (or a little more if its an old cow and the hide is really tough and thick).

Josh used his body weight to push against the iron, applying just the right amount of pressure.

And this is the result.  You can see the outline of the brand.  The area is frozen immediately after the iron is applied, but soon thaws and puffs up a little.  After about a month, the area will be scaly with dry skin and a scab-like area, but once the affected skin flakes off the new white hair (described previously) will start to grow back in.  This will take about a month longer.  So between two and three months and the brands will show through.

Once the branding procedure is completed, the cow is let out of the chute.  The young hiefers are a little more wild than the older, more docile cows.  The heifers run out, but the mature cows take their time walking away, occaionally looking back with a "What just happened there?" astonished look on their face.

And while that one's walking away, the guys have already walked the next cow into the chute and are starting all over again.  They'll do this until the entire herd is done.

Peek-a-boo.... they see you!
This is the squeeze tub.  The cows are taken in large groups from the herd, then divided into yet smaller groups to wait in the tub, and from there are walked one at a time into the chute.  If you look, you can see the ear tags that I mentioned before.  Every cow has an ear tag with an ID number on it that helps match cows and calves in the spring or sort it out from the herd if its needs some special attention.

And of course, I can't do a blog without cute pictures of the kids!

Walking up to the silo to visit Daddy and Papa while they were branding.  The kids and I had already discussed what was happening up there and all the safety rules and consequences, so they were pretty nervous to see what was happening.

I love this picture!  We took a shortcut across our yard, across the path of many acorns.  Out of the thousands that are there, Sarah Rose picked one that was special and carried it with her the entire hour we were out (we kept it short, the kids have colds).  Here she is showing me her "cookie nut".  Cookie nut = coconut = what Sarah Rose thinks an acorn is!

The tractor was one of the safety zones the kids could play around.  If they wanted to watch the branding, they had to hold my hand.  Otherwise, they stayed far, far away!

And then the terrace got their attention.  This is a big hill to climb for such little ones....

But they eventually reached the summit!  Notice the beautiful blue sky!

And then it was time for an exciting game of tag and hide-n-seek around the stover bag.

Finally time for coffee time!

Awww... my little girl's first picture sitting on the wheel hub (or whatever its called).

And finally one last game of Frisbee with a make shift disc, a lid off the livestock waterer.  If you look just above and left of Sarah's right hand, you can see it.

So, that's it.  Branding 101.  Hope you learned something!  Its quite a bit different than what you thought it was, isn't it?